10.31.2013

German Scientists have calculated the dispersion of Cs-137 in the Pacific Ocean

Here's a case where spin actually is doing a lotta good. Like how traffic slows because everyone wants to gape at an accident, the fickle finger of attention has lingered on the Fukshima radiation contamination story in part, because of the charges of plagiarism ever since the blogpost At the Very Least, Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over went viral recently.

Attention wise it's difficult to break in through the non-stop celebrity blingfest even if your story is that nuclear experts estimate "Fukushima’s fallout at 20-30 times as high as as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings in 1945.” and that the only way to protect your children and grandchildren is by NOT EATING SEAFOOD from the Pacific Ocean..

The Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California now recommends not buying any fish from the Pacific Ocean or western states, including Baja. The Nuclear experts are calling on the U.S. government to test West Coast waters and Pacific seafood sold in the U.S. in the wake of Japan’s alarming admission about an ongoing radiation leak, something the EPA and the FDA have so far refused to do, as they are only testing imported fish, not wild-caught. WHY?

Right now, approximately 300 tons of contaminated water is pouring into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every 24 hours. WHY aren’t world governments and the UN jumping in to contain what’s going on? It's obvious TEPCO officials have no idea what they’re doing and have been lying all along, meanwhile, the Pacific Ocean's web of life may be collapsing. The experts all know that unlike some other compounds, radioactive cesium does not quickly sink to the sea bottom but remains dispersed in the water column, from the surface to the ocean floor. Fish can swim right through it, ingesting it through their gills, by taking in seawater or by eating organisms that have already taken it in.

Michael Snyder, writing at ActivistPost, says, "Right now, massive numbers of fish and sea creatures are dying in the Pacific Ocean. In addition, independent tests have shown that significant levels of cesium-137 are in a very high percentage of the fish that are being caught in the Pacific and sold in North America. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the largest nuclear disaster in the history of mankind has been constantly releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean for more than two years?

10.29.2013

Over the last few days the Rolls Royce Revolutionaries - Brand, Hedges and Klein - have been calling for the big R - Revolution, ending extractive capitalism, ripping out the framework that supports them and the rest of us to different extents. They've advocating 'Celebricide'. Good on 'em i say. Hopefully they'll carry on to action.

Action, that's not so easy, revolutions are ugly and often colored red with the blood of martyrs. Add to that the fact that never in history have the entitled ever given up their position voluntarily and the billions of 'consumers' who vote with their consumption every day to support it and who would start shooting if the malls closed.

The Rolls Royce Revolutionaries, and their sympathizers, like me, are usually a hopeful but sorry lot. Not just because we're so badly outnumbered and severely out gunned but because as westerners our lives are supported by the same framework that supports the rich [both revolutionary few and reactionary many].

George Orwell said, "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Framed that way just the speaking of the truth is laudable. And, knowing that, as Voltaire said, "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.", it's also commendable that despite the fact that the first lesson for new revolutionists is learning to 'duck', they've used the 'R' word.

Celebrities advocating 'Celebricide'? makes a person wonder though. Are the same 'ol powers just using the emotional energy in our angst to sell us the crap in the ads they're running beside the revolutionary articles? Is The New Statesman trying to boost it's market share so they can charge the advertisers more? Are the well paid Rolls Royce Revolutionary writers themselves living lives of comfort with lavish digs and jet set lives paid for by the ads?

Even turning down the burners far enough to slow down our spiralling slide into environmental suicide would 'cost' $o many $o much with the the only way to avoid it seeming to be a worldwide financial collapse before it happens. Revolution would be way uglier, way redder, that's why i root for financial collapse to come riding in before the four horsemen do.

Richard Wilber said long ago, "We milk the cow of the world, and as we do We whisper in her ear, 'You are not true.'" Wilber saw that we were attempting unsuccessfully to distance ourselves from the natural world. Since Wilber's time the consumers have consumed all the milk and are now eating the cow. Humans could survive without extractive capitalism, without industrial agriculture, without interest [the worst sin of all] but we and many other species can't survive with them for much longer.

'Celebricide' may be fashionable but revolution starts the bottom, from the mud. When Brand, Hedges and Klein give away their fortunes to the needy and live the lives their present advocacy of revolution would lead to if adopted i'll listen, maybe go help 'em weed or something, until then, they'll keep livin the high life and i'll keep livin my life high.

10.21.2013

Chris Hedges says in his article at Truthdig today, "There is no way within the system to defy the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry or war profiteers. The only route left to us, as Aristotle knew, is revolt." America's last revolt generated land-reform... it went: conquest, enclosure, inheritance, foreclosure, and sale to the highest bidder.

Hedges goes on to say, "The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich. Compliant politicians, clueless entertainers and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture, which holds up the rich as leaders to emulate and assures us that through diligence and hard work we can join them, keep us from seeing the truth."

Ain't Hedges great? i'd add that many of Hedges 'we's and us's' dance off the cliff exuberantly not seeing the truth. Where Hedges says "We have been blinded to...", making us out to be passive passengers instead of the producers and directors of our own destiny. The only thing 'we' really all have is personal responsibility, we are cruise directors not passengers. The blindness is self-inflicted

Anyway, John Steinbeck said it well when he said, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Mainstream media gives very little coverage to poverty because it's uncomfortable for advertisers trying to embrace the Horatio Alger Myth. As Barbara Ehrenreich, of Time Magazine, put it: "They don't want really depressing articles about misery and hardship near their ads."

Aristotle's revolt is viable in that progressive land reform in the United States and Canada could address a range of environmental and social problems, encouraging sustainable organic farming and perennial range lands that provide (literally) green jobs, and a re-imagining of rural North America.

Land reform works. Even in Zimbabwe, where the corrupt Mugabe regime doles out the choicest slabs to its pals, the overwhelming evidence is that government-led land reform has in fact worked for the poor. What happens when you give land to landless, dedicated, and intelligent people? They work at it, they make a life of it, they make farming work. They are Aristotle's bottom-up revolt

10.20.2013

Watching Washington State's initiative process unfold from up here in BC is like watching the sausage being made on the one hand but inspiring on the other. Washington citizens get a chance to make a real meaningful difference by voting Yes on I-522 on Nov. 5th, a lesson in grassroots democracy for BCers and everybody. There are 'issues' with initiative based law making, but it is about the only lever the people have left to move the mountain of entitlement claimed by the elites.

The No campaign's misleading ads [all of which have been rebutted here] are largely bankrolled by five out-of-state corporations and a trade group, GMA, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group for the food industry, which is now the single biggest contributor to the No campaign, collectively donating $7.2 million to date. Biochemical companies Monsanto and Dupont Pioneer have donated $4.8 million and $3.2 million respectively, records show [complete list available here].

According to Ocean Robbins article at the Huffington Post, "It hasn't been a good week for Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry." Ocean's article, 'Huge GMO News', concludes: "Nobody knows what's going to happen in Washington between now and November 5. But from Mexico, to Hawaii and to the 64 nations that already have GMO labeling, this tide just might be turning. Maybe we, the people, do get a say in what we know, and what we eat, after all.

We all know why are Monsanto and the junk food industry willing to spend millions of dollars trying to keep you in the dark about what's in your food. Big corporate ag.don't want you to know because they're afraid of what might happen if you do. They're afraid they'd have to change practices, maybe 'profit' a little less, maybe see their stock price fall, maybe see their home in Malibu with a big ol' For Sale sign on the lawn, whadda shame eh.

In the 20 years since GMO crops first came on the market, studies have found that they have led to higher pesticide use, and no meaningful improvement in flavor, nutrition, yield or water requirements. Instead, what they've created are plants that are engineered to withstand massive dosing of toxic herbicides, and plants that function as living pesticide factories. Monsanto's Bt. corn, for example, is actually registered with the EPA as a pesticide.

Win or lose on Nov. 5th it's only one battle in a long fight, but up here at the hideout we've got our fingers and paws crossed, we're hoping that the gang at the 'Yes on I-522' campaign gives them old corporate ag, folks a shot broadside.

10.19.2013

District War Chief Jason Augustine faces down the barrels of 20 pistols.

Miles Howe, who has been camping at the current blockade along highway 134 since the inception of the encampment and filing almost daily reports for the Media Coop since June. Today he published his eye witness account of yesterday's confrontation that has spawned protests that are again today sweeping Canada following Thursday's assault by paramilitary-style police on members of indigenous Elsipogtog Mi’kmaq First Nation and local residents as they blockaded a New Brunswick fracking exploration site.

Miles reports that "in the pre-dawn dark, about seven molotov cocktails flew out of the woods opposite the police line stationed in the ditch, throwers unknown. Two camouflaged officers then pumped three rounds of rubber bullet shotgun blasts into the woods in response. Shortly after, three so-called warriors, who claim to have arrived two nights ago from Manitoba with a journalist in tow, ran down the road towards the far end of the police blockade and that last night no one at the blockade had ever seen these individuals before.

This all occurred long before images of bandana-ed Indigenous people, whose veracity as true grassroots activists and not provocateurs is now being closely examined, ever set fire to a single RCMP squad car in Rexton. As the video below just released by members of the Elsipogtog Mi’kmaq First Nation makes clear they already know who the 'snake' provocateurs are - two of them have been identified as Harrisen Freison and 'Eagle Claw'. So these two, who ran back behind police lines after the incident, torched the 5 the police cars, and threw the Molotov Cocktails.

These two undercover cops in New Brunswick followed a long tradition of dirty cop tricks. In a recent example, according to a report issued by the commission for public complaints against the RCMP, at the 2010 G20 summit held in Toronto, at least two plainclothes police officers posing as protesters were among those arrested, suggesting that the tactic has been employed on more than one occasion in Canada. The warrior in the video names a few others that are closer to his home.

It's impossible to understand why protests are sweeping Canada and parts of the US today from mainstream media reports about Thursday's assault by police [but they sure love the burning cop car footage]. As Miles says, the blockade and the much larger issues of fracking and aboriginal title have been ongoing for awhile. The Elsipogtog Mi’kmaq First Nation has many allies on both fronts. The police know this, but they are tasked with enforcing the rulings and ravings of corporate courts. So the New Brunswick RCMP awkwardly opted for the old provocateur gambit and, as often happens, got caught.

10.15.2013

Demand drives 'the market' in consumer capitalism. Every exchange of goods or money can, according to economics, can be reduced to supply and demand. And that there is no market without demand. Demand is the driver of all exchange, supply grows and slows to meet it. Their are manipulative advertising gimmicks that can marginally increase demand for one brand of plastic bullshit over another but if there is no underlying demand for the commodity or service the supply lines dwindle to zero.

All the environmental degradation is being caused by the supply side devouring the world to meet those demands.

The fossil fuel industry is driven by demand, just like the rest of 'em. Unless humans learn to live within their means, learn that hard work isn't a sin - debt is. Unless humans get rid of capitalism with its delusion of endless growth, it will continue...until it collapses. And oil, be it tar sands crud or any other will, like water, flow and ooze however it can via the path of least resistance to meet the demand of the demand-ers...until.

And there are no truly green alternatives only green illusions. Every type of product has dirty effects on the environment embedded in it. This interview with researcher Ozzie Zehner of UC Berkeley is eye-opening. There are no 'Green' solutions to the environmental degradation being caused by human over-consumption.

As soon as a person researches the science underlying every newly hyped - hype, that's where the money is - solution that allows continued consumption they run into the same problem - advertisers can easily fool us, but they can't fool physics, they can't hide all the energy embedded in their new gizmo. They can make money with slick slogans, but they can't fool the second law of thermodynamics. The only real solution to over-consumption is consuming less.

A Prius, for instance, may burn less thru-put fossil fuel, but its manufacture, its batteries, its rare earth elements have environmental costs that don't disappear. Demand driven consumer capitalism is the driver of the broader 'environmental pollution matrix' of which global warming is one aspect. Jorge Majfud understands that distinction when he says, "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing consumerism is like combating drug trafficking without reducing the drug addiction."

There are solutions to the broad environmental pollution but they are inconvenient, they include hard work [4 letter words in our culture] and consuming far less of everything [another blasphemy]. The Want-Less meme is very well explored on The Simplicity Institute website who's many excellent articles and info on living simply and happily through wanting less is called “a beacon of hope.” by Richard Heinberg, from the Post-Carbon Institute.

10.11.2013

Last week the Harper Government [formerly known as Canada] announced new medical marijuana rules that almost every stakeholder group - patients, homegrowers, pharmacists, doctors, nurses and various health experts - have denounced. The list of supporters includes the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, and other Horatio Alger wannabes.

"Medical marijuana free market to open in Canada" said the CBC. Adding near breathlessly that, "The profit potential is enormous,"...But, like near all huckster pitches, this one glosses over the facts with bloated projections of future profits designed to attract investors. Right now there's 37,000-ish medical marijuana users recognized by the gubberment, but officials project that number will swell more than 10-fold, to as many as 450,000 people, by 2024 and every one of these huckster dollars is predicated on those very bloated projections.

It'd be interesting to watch a modern neo-liberal type bank financed, business school trained managers, marketers, promoters, lawyers and IT folks take on the many thousand year old tradition of small mom and pop pot growers. The shiny new corporate licence holders would be carrying huge overhead to pay all the interest on facilities, all the wages of the managers etc. as well as the wages of the people who actually grow and process the pot, all that other stuff will be part of the cost of corporate pot. The mom & pops already own their empty basement room, mom & pop are all those managers, all those workers.

From a community wide perspective, all the loonies mom & pop earn they spend in the 'local marketplace' whereas the bank's interest, the investor's imaginary profits and management costs leave town on the next 'free market' keystroke. Think about it, the most strong, efficient and resilient systems are made of interconnected small independent but communicating nodes. That's what nature decided is the best. So, IMO, the large debt and managerial cost over burdened corporate pot side will be beaten up by the independents who can adjust their prices immediately, can try new antidotes to hold off Mother Nature's never ending parade of critters and diseases, can adjust production and costs of operation almost instantly, and best of all, can experiment with developing different strains and better pot.

The patients know it was cheap to grow now CanniMed is advertising prices of $9 to $12 a gram – out of the reach of many of the terminally ill users who cannot work. So patients will, like water, flow to the least resistance, in this case it'll be mom & pop next door. Back in the boardroom things will look gloomy - no profits, sales and quality continue to drop while costs continue to soar.

But the bankers will make money and the 'smart money' will get out before the roller coaster crests. In today's capitalism money is made on hype not goods. Corporate pot, corporate anything, can't compete with the small scale, established, independent and interdependent networks that's why right-wing economists never really advocate for a truly 'free market'. In the past 45 years since i started being into pot the price has dropped while the quality and the availability have skyrocketed. That's what happens in a truly 'Free Market'.

10.03.2013

A deep-sea diver fits a giant Nomura's jellyfish with a sensor that will transmit data about the depth and temperature of the waters it visits.

According to the report 'The State of the Ocean 2013: Perils, Prognoses and Proposals' by an international team of marine scientists at the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) found that the world's oceans and marine life are facing an unprecedented threat by combination of industrial pollution, human-driven global warming and climate change, and continued and rampant overfishing.

The scientists recently found, the rate of acidification in the oceans is the highest its been in over 300 million years. Additionally, de-oxygenation--caused by both warming and industrial runoff--is stripping the ocean of its ability to support the plants and animals that live in it...but are ideal conditions for Gaia's next reaction to the forcing being put on it by humans, jellyfish.

First perhaps came Gaia's atmospheric phalanx, the air war. Now we're seeing another front open up, Gaia has enlisted the potential of King Neptune's legions. "Jellyfish are opportunistic creatures; the key to their 500-million-year success is their adaptability. Once jellies get to a new habitat, they're very good at sliding in and taking advantage of excess food." says Monty Graham, an assistant professor of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama.

Excess food, according to Graham and other researchers, is often a result of overharvesting of the fish that feed on the same resources. Eutrophication, a process in which nutrient-rich runoff from agriculture, sewage-treatment plants and other sources boosts algae growth, also contributes. The algal blooms, as they're called, reduce the amount of available oxygen in the water, thus killing off competitors like fish. Jellyfish, on the other hand, can thrive in this oxygen-deprived environment.

Biologist Lisa-ann Gershwin blames the recent blooms on the jellyfish's own invincible biological makeup and the usual suspects: us. Overfishing has tipped the balance of complex ecosystems; plastic waste and fishing methods are destroying the few natural jellyfish predators; oil and gas drilling platforms and other floating rubbish serve as jellyfish nurseries; industrial and agricultural waste have caused low oxygen, high nitrogen and rising acidity in oceans in which fish cannot survive, but jellyfish can; and climate change exacerbates it all. Startlingly, Gershwin finds jellyfish displacing penguins in Antarctica, crashing the world’s fisheries and taking over "the oceans as we know them...one bite at a time."

We now see that Gaia, choosing from a near infinite range of responses to our hubris, has the Cnidaricians on the move, invasions of up to four million jellyfish at a time have closed nuclear plants in California, Sweden, Japan and India, as well as causing a Filipino power blackout (coal-fire power plant) and U.S. aircraft carrier shutdown. This past week a several-ton bloom of jellyfish clogged the pipes and shut down Sweden's Oskarshamn plant, one of the world's largest nuclear reactors.

We all should have seen this coming, a few did. One group, Mindil Beach Markets, saw it and started a fantastic free educational outreach program named The Jellyfish Project a few years ago. The Jellyfish Project is an environmental initiative focused on generating awareness about the state of our world’s oceans through music and live performance. The Jellyfish Project is designed to stimulate conversation about a sustainable future. The program is offered FREE of charge to all BC high schools and middle schools. Sessions consist of a performance by the band followed by a discussion period. Topics include overfishing, marine plastics, ocean acidification, and sustainable solutions. If you would like to bring The Jellyfish Project to your school, please email info@thejellyfishproject.org.

10.02.2013

Ran into a solution for the stressed lady on the left, well maybe more a pin-prick or a slight breeze, It's called 'Hello NSA' They've developed a handy phrase/sentence generator that she, and all of us who'd like to help the NSA feel noticed, can use to generate sentences sure to catch the eye of the NSA-bots. Imagine how well appreciated the NSA would feel if millions and millions of us decided to include a sentence or two from 'Hello NSA' in every email, facebook update and tweet.

Here's two that they generated for this blog-post: On a Southwest flight to San Diego, Iran into one of the Chemical Brothers. Iran, Youran, Theyran perfect eh! And: We're out of fertilizer–see if Home Depot has any ammonium nitrate. Careful loading it up–that stuff leaks. Whadda ya think? Should they earn The Mud Report a new follower in Utah?

It seems that Uncle Sam is more of a peeping Tom than first thought. They already sift through and store trillions of bytes everyday. Thousands of folks work around the clock tending the machines that snoop on us all. Perhaps only once in awhile will these tenders be summoned to serious action by a menacing phrase or sentence. Sooner or later, if you remember to use 'Hello NSA', a recently bored NSA listener might be reading along so don’t forget to say hello.

Now just imagine for a second, if you were planning a criminal act, let alone a terrorist act in this day and age, would you use the Internet or phone to talk about or plan it? Of course not. None of this is news, the criminals/terrorists aren't stupid, your government is. Or are they? Billion$ For Bribes, Bullshit and Fear.

La Via Campesina is the international movement which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.

Sitting Up Mud

"Bokonon made mud. Bokonon said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job Bokonon had done.

"Nice going, Bokonon. Nobody but you could have done it, I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor!"

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. Amen."

Quotes

"Our dreams draw us foward, as water whispers to the dowser's wand."- Tony Cohan

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide." - Tom Robbins

"Politics is how you live your life, not who you vote for!" -Jerry Rubin

"The pencil is mightier than the pen"- Robert Pirsig

"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman

When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said, “At least the handle is one of us.” — Turkish proverb

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction" - Pascal

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

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Theism?

Flying Spagetti Monster Church

The single greatest service each of us can provide to our planet, our families and ourselves is to grow our own organic food from heritage seeds. Then to save our own seed in turn, and in so doing be part of the future solution to the present day destruction being sown by GMO's, agri-business and the bio-technology giants. - Bob Wiley